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Our waking dreams are fatal. How I dreamt
Of things impossible? (Could sleep do more?)
Of joys perpetual in perpetual change?
Of stable pleasures on the tossing wave?
Eternal sunshine in the storms of life?
How richly were my noontide trances hung
With gorgeous tapestries of pictur'd joys?
Joy behind joy, in endless perspective!
Till at death's toll, whose restless iron tongue
Calls daily for his millions at a meal,
Starting I woke, and found myself undone.

Young's Night Thoughts, n. 1.

The smoothest course of nature has its pains;
And truest friends, thro' error, wound our rest.
Without misfortune, what calamities?

And what hostilities, without a foe!

Nor are foes wanting to the best on earth.

But endless is the list of human ills,

And sighs might sooner fail, than cause to sigh. Ibid.

Life's little stage is a small eminence,

Inch-high the grave above; that home of man,
Where dwells the multitude: we gaze around;
We read their monuments; we sigh; and while
We sigh, we sink; and are what we deplor'd;
Lamenting, or lamented, all our lot!
Ibid. n. 2.

Ere man has measur'd half his weary stage,
His luxuries have left him no reserve,
No maiden relishes, no unbroácht delights;
On cold-serv'd repetitions he subsists,
And in the tasteless present chews the past;
Disgusted chews, and scarce can swallow down.
Like lavish ancestors, his earlier years
Have disinherited his future hours,

Which starve on orts, and glean their former field.

Young's Night Thoughts, n. 3.

Like some fair hum'rists, life is most enjoy'd,
When courted least; most worth, when disesteem'd.
Young's Night Thoughts, n. 3.

Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour?
What tho' we wade in wealth, or soar in fame ?
Earth's highest station ends in "Here he lies:"
And dust to dust" concludes her noblest song.
Ibid, n. 4.

Behold the picture of earth's happiest man :
He calls his wish, it comes; he sends it back,
And says, he call'd another; that arrives,
Meets the same welcome; yet he still calls on;
Till one calls him, who varies not his call,
But holds him fast, in chains of darkness bound,
Till nature dies, and judgment sets him free;
A freedom far less welcome than his chain.

To-day is so like yesterday, it cheats;
We take the lying sister for the same.
Life glides away, Lorenzo, like a brook;
For ever changing, unperceiv'd the change.

Ibid.

lbid, n. 5.

Man, ill at ease,

In this, not his own place, this foreign field,
Where nature fodders him with other food,
Than was ordain'd his cravings to suffice,
Poor in abundance, famish'd at a feast,

Sighs on for something more, when most enjoy'd.

The cottager, and king,

Ibid, n. 7.

He whom sea-sever'd realms obey, and he
Who steals his whole dominion from the waste,
Repelling winter blasts with mud and straw,
Disquieted alike, draw sigh for sigh,
In fate so distant, in complaint so near.

Ibid.

How frail, men, things! How momentary, both!
Fantastic chace, of shadows hunting shades!

Young's Night Thoughts, n. 8.

There's not a day, but, to the man of thought,
Betrays some secret, that throws new reproach
On life, and makes him sick of seeing more.

On life's gay stage, one inch above the grave,
The proud run up and down in quest of eyes;
The sensual, in pursuit of something worse;
The grave, of gold; the politic, of power;
And all, of other butterflies, as vain!

How must a spirit, late escaped from earth,
The truth of things new-blazing in its eye,
Look back, astonish'd, on the ways of men,
Whose lives' whole drift is to forget their graves!

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid, n. 9.

Even so luxurious men, unheeding, pass
An idle summer-life in fortune's shine,
A season's glitter! Thus they flutter on
From toy to toy, from vanity to vice;
Till, blown away by death, oblivion comes
Behind, and strikes them from the book of life.
Thomson's Seasons-Summer,

Ah little think the gay licentious proud,

Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;
They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;

Ah little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death,
And all the sad variety of pain.

Ibid-Winter,

Even in the vale, where wisdom loves to dwell,
With friendship, peace, and contemplation join'd,
How many, rack'd with honest passions, droop
In deep retir'd distress...

Ibid

Ah! whither now are fled

Those dreams of greatness? those unsolid hopes
Of happiness? those longings after fame?

Those restless cares? those busy bustling days?
Those gay-spent, festive nights? those veering thoughts
Lost between good and ill, that shar'd thy life?
All now are vanish'd! Virtue sole survives
Immortal never-fading friend of man,

His guide to happiness on high.

Thomson's Seasons-Winter.

Where now, ye lying vanities of life!
Ye ever-tempting, ever-cheating train?
Where are ye now? and what is your amount?
Vexation, disappointment, and remorse.
Sad, sickening thought! and yet deluded man,
A scene of crude disjointed visions past,
And broken slumbers, rises still resolv'd,

With new-flush'd hopes, to run the giddy round. Ibid.
'Tis but a night, a long and moonless night;
We make the grave our bed, and then are gone.

Blair's Grave.

Ah! in what perils is vain life engag'd!
What slight neglects, what trivial faults destroy
The hardiest frame! of indolence, of toil,
We die; of want, of superfluity.

Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.

In such a world, so thorny, and where none
Finds happiness unblighted, or if found,
Without some thistly sorrow at its side,
It seems the part of wisdom, and no sin
Against the law of love, to measure lots
With less distinguish'd than ourselves, that thus
We may with patience bear our mod' rate ills,
And sympathize with others, suffering more.

Cowper's Task, b. 4.

All has its date below. The fatal hour
Was register'd in Heaven ere time began.
We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works
Die too. The deep foundations that we lay,
Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains.
We build with what we deem eternal rock,
A distant age asks where the fabric stood,
And in the dust, sifted and search'd in vain,
The undiscoverable secret sleeps.

Cowper's Task, b. 5.

How readily we wish time spent revoked,
That we might try the ground again, where once
(Through inexperience as we now perceive)
We miss'd that happiness we might have found.

Ibid. b. 6.

LIGHT.

Hail holy light, offspring of Heav'n first-born,
Or of the eternal co-eternal beam

May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light,

Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.

Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 3.

Before the sun,

Before the Heav'ns thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.

LOVE.

Oh! I am wounded-Not without: But angry Cupid, bolting from her eyes, Hath shot himself into me, like a flame;

Ibid.

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